Which island nation lies closest to the north of Madagascar?

The Comoros, an archipelago in the Mozambique Channel, and the interesting thing about it is the one island that voted the other way. When the Comoros voted for independence from France in 1974, Mayotte voted overwhelmingly to stay - so three islands became a country and the fourth remained French, and is now a full department of France with the euro and EU membership.

The Comoros has never accepted that, and the United Nations has repeatedly backed its claim to the whole archipelago. The result is one of the sharpest wealth gradients anywhere: Mayotte is many times richer than the islands a few dozen kilometres away, which drives constant irregular migration across the channel in small boats with a substantial death toll, and a bitter political argument inside France about it.

The Comoros also has one of the highest coup rates of any country - around twenty coups or attempts since 1975, several organised by the French mercenary Bob Denard, who overthrew governments there repeatedly across two decades and at one point effectively ran the country. It is separately famous for the coelacanth, a fish known only from fossils and assumed extinct for 66 million years until one was caught off South Africa in 1938, with the Comoros later found to hold a resident population.